Gov Ugwuanyi And The Rampaging Herdsmen

By Dan Amor 

Like a typical Nigerian nightmare, the incessant attacks on some communities in Enugu state by suspected Fulani herdsmen have generated more heat than light. In March this year, 70 youths on a rescue mission to extricate their people from the vice-grip of Fulani herdsmen at Ugwuleshi in Agwu local government area of the state, were rounded up and detained by security forces. 

President Buhari and Gov Ugwuanyi

On April 25, barely a month after the first incident, several indigenes of Ukpabi Nimbo village in Uzouwani local government area were reportedly killed by Fulani herdsmen. And most recently, a seminarian, Lazarus Nwafor, was killed and four others including a pregnant woman, severely injured by the herdsmen. The woman later gave up the ghost from the injuries she sustained during the attack. Apart from the usual pantomimes by the authorities that they would not tolerate criminal herdsmen, the Buhari-led Federal government appears helpless and lacks the political will to confront this hydra-headed monster threatening the peace and security of the country.

It is this ugly development which has generated sustained tension in the state hitherto acknowledged everywhere as the most peaceful in the entire South East geopolitical zone of the country. Standing in the middle of this tension is Mr. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, the governor and 'chief security officer' of the state on whose desk the buck stops. And since irrational impulses are not surprising in the stress and tension that characterise a demented society such as Nigeria, many furious indigenes of the Coal-City state are calling on the governor to declare war with the marauders. True, in an atmosphere of violence, reason is sometimes abandoned and humanitarian principles forgotten since the inflamed passions of the time lead men to commit atrocities. But the concern here is not with the psychological pathology of those who commit atrocities but rather with what has turned our nation to a slaughterhouse where human beings are daily murdered with intimidating alacrity.

It would, of course, be absurd to deny that the Federal government is implicitly or explicitly responsible for this carnival of anomie enveloping the nation. In the case of Enugu state where some of us virtually grew up, the lamentable absence of development before now, especially in the rural areas, provides an alibi for the germination and cross fertilization of criminals especially of the herdsmen variety. For instance, Enugu state parades some of the most dreaded and deadly forests in the South East. Some of these forests include Ugwuogo Nike, Umuopu Enugu Ezike, Umuogbo Agu, Ette in Igboeze North, Affa Eke Road by Ninth Mile Express, Akpakwumeze, Nimbo, Obollo Afor, Atakwu, Akwugbe Ugwu, Agwu, Ugwu Onyeama, etcetera. In fact, there are so many thick forests in Enugu state that would even make Sambisa Forests, the Boko Haram battle field pale into insignificance. For so many years, the Fulani herdsmen have been living in these forests and nobody cared any hoot to ask why they prefer to live in the forests like apes. It is in these forests that the herdsmen stay to perfect their strategies to unleash terror on their host communities since even the natives lack access roads and rural telephony to alert the police and other security agencies.